Paper: London police wants source of hacking story

The Guardian has not gone into detail about how Hill got her information about the Dowler case, or whether it involved the arrested detective. But Rusbridger told the AP that she had done nothing inappropriate.

Police said that the new phone hacking investigation - code named Operation Weeting - was one of its most sensitive and added that it couldn't take the "significant public and political concern" regarding leaks to the media into account unless it was "more robust in our investigations."

Guardian journalists said that without their paper's aggressive reporting, the phone hacking scandal which so embarrassed the police might have remained buried.

The London police force was careful to pay tribute to the paper in its statement. It said it was "not seeking to prevent whistle blowing or investigative journalism that is in the public interest, including the Guardian's involvement in the exposure of phone hacking."